by Jim Benton
about stuff.
Or maybe it was stuff about things.
I have no idea what things or what
stuff, because it was one of those moments where
neither his mouth nor my ears were trying very hard.
It was only a matter of moments before our feet
decided to move in different directions and the
conversation was over.
I really think spontaneous
conversations should be planned better.
Angeline is obviously upset with me now.
She walked right past me at lunch today without
saying hello, and I could tell that she wanted me to
know that she was walking right past me, because
she walked slowly and flipped a little shampoo
fragrance my way, which is something she’s always
been capable of doing, but hasn’t done at me for a
long time.
She intentionally flipped green- apple
fragrance at me even though we all know darn well
she could have flipped something pleasant like
vanilla. Nope, instead she chose the sourest fruit
that people are still willing to eat.
It’s a very subtle form of assault, but I
speak her language.
Isabella wasn’t at lunch — she’s still busy
with whatever in the library — so I ate with Dicky.
I know I shouldn’t mind, because I’ve learned that
even though Dicky appears to be kind of deformed
and a social mudpuddle, he actually has a huge
heart and a lot of great things going for him, even
though I found myself secretly wishing that there
were bees going for him today instead.
He was making some sort of conversation but
I wasn’t paying attention, so I have to assume it
was something about some recently received
wedgie.
On occasion he also refers to these as
“melvins” or “getting mail” — as in,
“somebody put a letter in the slot.” You’ve heard
about Eskimos and snow. Nerds have over two
hundred words for Underwear Victimization.
I found myself beginning to wonder if
all of middle school is just Hudson’s stammering,
Angeline’s hair-flipping, Dicky’s wedgies, and
Isabella’s whatever- it-is- she’s -doing-in-the- library.
Maybe that’s all it was for Grandma, too.
Wednesday 25
Dear Dumb Diary,
Mom asked me about the dance at breakfast.
My breakfast routine used to be like this:
Open fridge.
Find nothing to eat.
Close fridge.
Lower hopes.
Repeat.
But I’m smarter than that now, so today I
had one of those important cereals that are full of
meaningful ingredients. And since this stuff takes
a lot of force and time to chew, I was at the
table longer than usual.
“Are you going to that dance on Friday?”
Mom asked.
I put up one finger in the Universal Sign
for “Wait a second. I’m chewing. This garbage
doesn’t go down easy.”
“You used to go to all the dances,” she said.
“I think you should go.”
Huge gulpy noise like a donkey
swallowing an ashtray.
“I might, Mom,” I finally replied, “but don’t you
think that school dances are kind of . . . dumb?”
My mom looked at me for a long time, and I
got the impression that maybe she was thinking
deeply about something.
“I don’t think they are. But it’s okay if you
do,” she said.
Sounds innocent, right? But I know
this game.
Mom knows that sometimes I just say the
opposite of whatever she says, because I can’t help
myself and I just need to argue with her. I don’t
know why I do it. Maybe she deserves it. I don’t know.
But here, when she said, “I don’t think they
are,” she immediately added, “But it’s okay if you do.”
See? NOW, no matter what I say, I’ll be
agreeing with her, but also disagreeing with her.
Mom has a devious side.
I still owed her an answer to her first question
about going to the dance. I took another bite of
“cereal” and chewed slowly. I needed a second to
think before I spoke, but also if you don’t chew
healthy cereal slowly, you will vomit and die.
“I haven’t decided yet,” I said. Which is true.
At least as true as it needs to be.
Thursday 26
Dear Dumb Diary,
Aunt Carol and Uncle Dan came over for dinner
tonight. After dessert, Aunt Carol came up to my
room. She wanted to know if I had had a chance to
read through the diary that had been in the box.
“Oh, was there a diary in there?” I said,
perfectly making her totally believe that I
never saw it.
“I know you found it. Did you read it?” she
asked.
“I may have glanced through a page or two,”
I said. “I don’t think you can violate a person’s
privacy with glances.”
“I read every single word,” Aunt Carol
admitted, and she laughed this sinister little laugh
like a girl version of that guy with knives on his fingers,
except that she has really pretty polish on hers.
“Amazing how some things never change, huh? In
many ways we’re all so much alike,” she went on.
“That could have been my diary, or your mom’s. I’ll
bet you write stuff like that in yours.”
And then I exploded a little.
“But everything she wrote was so dumb!”
I said. “She’s worried about all this stupid stuff!
She wasted so much time worrying about nothing!
Doing nothing. She was going to be somebody’s
grandma one day, but she doesn’t write one single
grandmotherly thing.”
Aunt Carol looked a little confused, and then
she started to laugh again.
“Of course there isn’t anything
grandmotherly in there!” she said. “It’s not
your grandmother’s diary.”
“It’s your grandfather’s diary,” she added.
“WAT,” I said.
And I said it just like that.
WAT.
I flipped through the pages. I thought back to
the entries.
“But . . . she was talking about going to a
dance . . . with M.B.”
“HE was talking about going to a dance. M.B.
stands for Mary Beth. Your grandpa was talking
about your grandma. Her name was Mary Beth,” she
said, and I saw her eyes get all watery. “He fell in
love with her in middle school.”
I ran over and grabbed the picture of
Grandpa — my big, tough, scary- looking grandpa.
“THIS GUY was all tied up in knots over
a girl?”
Aunt Carol gave the picture a big kiss.
“Of course! Guys feel the same things girls
do. They get jealous, and hurt, and fall in love.
Heck, your Uncle Dan cries at the sad parts in
movies, but he pretends not to. He always blames it
on allergies — allergies that only act up when the
main character faces some kind of tragedy. ”
Hey, I think Isabella has allergies in movies
sometimes.
Aunt Carol smiled. “In many of the ways that
matter, Jamie, boys and girls are not so terribly
different. It’s just that some people don’t always
want to share what they’re feeling.”
“No drawings,” I said, suddenly aware of
the absence. “There are no drawings in this diary.
Grandma was a really good artist. I should have
noticed that.”
“I have to take the diary back now,” Aunt
Carol said. “I’m going to give it to your mom, and I
don’t want her to know that I gave it to you first.”
I asked if she knew who A.S. was.
“A.S.?” she asked.
“That really handsome boy that Grandpa
wrote about being jealous of. Beautiful hair. Maybe
he also had a crush on Grandma?”
“Oh right. That was such a long time ago,
Jamie. Nobody in the world could ever figure
that mystery out.”
After Aunt Carol left, I looked at my ugly
necklace for a long time. All the dumb stuff in that
diary totally DID matter.
It all added up to a life. The dumbness. The
smartness. The extra -dumbness. The super-extra-
dumbness.
The dance really and truly was the most
important thing.
Oh my gosh.
Hudson.
Friday 27
Dear Dumb Diary,
It’s very difficult when your dumbness leaves
you. You suddenly realize that, in some ways, your
dumbness is your best part.
I found Hudson as quickly as I could and said
the dumbest thing I could think of.
“Hey, Hudson. Want to go to the
dance with me?” I dumbed.
He looked a little surprised and then smiled
broadly.
“Yeah. Yes. Sure,” he said. “But I got the
feeling you weren’t interested. I wanted to say
something about your grandma, but every time I
tried, you always just —”
I cut him off in midsentence.
“I know. I’m sorry. I was just not being dumb.
It won’t happen again. I’ll be dumb from now on.
Not totally dumb. Dumb enough. Not all the time.
Dumb when I should be.”
And Hudson, incredibly, seemed to know what
I meant.
Then I found Angeline.
“I’ll fix the posters. Miss Anderson will
let me work in the art room at lunch.”
Angeline hugged me.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have —”
I cut her off in midsentence, too.
“I’m sorry, too, but remember, you and I
aren’t huggers, Ang. We talked about how some of
us have our own personal space that we don’t
want filled with you, and I’m the queen of those
people.”
“And I’m fine. I’m fine now. Let me fix the
posters,” I said. And I did. I know it was a little
late to do it, since they would only be up a few
hours before the dance, but I felt like I had to fix
them. I had to.
And the dance was great. Lots of balloons
and decorations and music. I had a lot of fun, maybe
for the first time in weeks. I think my grandpa and
grandma would have liked how dumb it was.
But Isabella was looking a little sad, so I
talked to her for a while out in the hall.
“I let you down, Jamie. I let your grandma
down,” she said.
“What are you talking about?”
“After we found out about your grandma’s
school, I started doing research. Even with those
old vampire bats hovering around me in the library,
I found records for everybody in her class.
“I looked in the records for any boy with the
initials M.B. — remember, that was the boy she
liked? — or any girl with the initials A.S. — the
brunette that was making her life difficult.
“My plan was to find this A.S. and do something
terrible to her lawn maybe, or egg her car, you know,
as a kind of sweet memorial for your grandma.
“But I couldn’t find a girl with the initials A.S.
or a boy with the initials M.B.”
I gave Isabella a gentle hug, which she
almost always interprets as a deadly attack, but
not this time.
“It turns out it was my grandpa’s diary.
M.B. was my grandma,” I said.
Isabella went all blank in the face. I could
almost see her scanning the information inside her
head. Then she grinned, and it was like a balloon
popped. Maybe from the grin, maybe not. Who
can say?
“So. A.S. was a boy,” Isabella said, nodding.
“In that case, I know exactly what to do.”
The next thing I knew, she had dragged me
over to the refreshment table, where some of the
teachers were handing out cookies and lemonade.
“Mr. Smith,” she said. “Did you by any chance
attend Walker Middle School in Hazel Heights? Or
should I call you . . . Algernon Smith?”
Mr. Smith was so surprised I thought his toupee
was going to spin right off the top of his head.
“How could you possibly know . . .” he
sputtered, and Isabella pulled her leg back into the
ready position. Mr. Smith was in greater danger
than he knew. I’ve seen Isabella kick chairs
between the legs so hard that they never stood
correctly again.
I stepped protectively in front of him.
“Move, Jamie,” Isabella said. “I’m doing this
for your grandma. Although I guess that now I’m
doing it for your grandpa. When I depart this world,
I don’t want to leave anybody unkicked. I just
want for your grandpa what I would want for myself.”
Mr. Smith put his hand on my shoulder. “I
did go to Walker Middle School, and I knew your
grandma,” he said.
He knew my grandma. I really thought that
Mr. Smith was less ancient than that. I guess that
wig of his does kind of work.
“She was beautiful, Jamie. Oh, I had a little
crush on her. All the fellows did.”
“She really was just like me,” I said totally
modestly.
“I knew your grandpa, too. He was tough as
nails, a real tiger. Made out of iron. The two of them
were perfect for each other. I never stood a
chance,” he said, and a look of sadness flickered
across his face.
I heard the tendons in Isabella’s legs untighten.
She was considering not kicking Mr. Smith.
“I thought about telling you when I made the
connection, Jamie, but I thought it might be weird
for you.”
Good call, Mr. Smith. Weird is exactly the
word for that.
“Anyway, I really am very sorry, Jamie. Your
grandma is a great girl. Lots of laughs.”
I took a breath.
IS.
Mr. Smith said is. And he ca
lled her a girl. Not
a grandma, or an old lady. She’s still there, alive, in
his head, and in there, she’s a girl.
“She liked your hair,” I said. “And my grandpa
was jealous of it.”
He laughed and ran his fingers across his wig.
“I had that going for me, anyway,” he said. “I
only wear this ridiculous toupee to stay connected
to those days. I know it’s not fooling anybody.”
“THAT’S A WIG?” I said, perfectly fooling
him into thinking I believed it was real.
“Nice try,” he said with a chuckle. “Your
grandma was a terrible liar, too.”
I took off the super- ugly necklace I’d found in
my grandma’s stuff and handed it to Mr. Smith.
“Could you please hang on to this for me
while I’m dancing? I wouldn’t want to lose it.”
He looked down at it and he seemed
hypnotized, transported to a time long ago, when
grandmas and grandpas were kids with ugly necklaces
and real hair, living in a world where you could buy
anything for a quarter, and everybody had the same
dumb issues they have now.
He smiled sweetly, and then Isabella
kicked him.
It wasn’t one of her regular kicks — I mean,
her shoe stayed on and everything. And Mr. Smith
didn’t even go all the way down to the ground.
I explained to him why Isabella felt the need
to do it — she was just trying to take care of some
unfinished business for my grandpa.
He said he understood and wouldn’t punish
her for it.
“I’d like to think somebody might take care of
my unfinished business one day,” he said in a super-
high voice.
“I might just do that,” Isabella said,
handing him his wig, which had landed on the
oatmeal cookies.
The rest of the dance was terrific. And
dumb. I dumbly danced with Hudson, and then